Tentacle-Free Anime: "ICE" (2007) Review

I think we can all agree that as much as we love anime, not all of them are gems. I know I've covered a few muddy rocks here and there, and that's exactly what I plan to do again today. As much as I love pointing out those finely-tuned series you should all check out, sometimes I gotta discuss the truly trashy ones, so you'll know to stay away. I wish I had gotten that warning before watching this show, but that's what I get for blind-buying the OVA ICE, an anime I had never heard of until I put my money into it...

"ICE"(2007)

Episodes: 3;Director:Makoto Kobayashi;Studio:PPM;Rating: PG-13

Summary:By A.D. 2010, all men have died off quickly due to a dramatic change in the environment and an unknown contaminant. The population decreased to the lowest number ever seen...until only the women were left alive. They live huddled in small corners of a world mostly reclaimed by nature. There are those who accept their inevitable extinction and live a carefree life... There are those who try to continue on the race with the help of science... It is a society of constant conflict over their differences of principles and policies. The story takes place in the center of Tokyo. It is one of the places left for them. The conflict over the specimen of "ICE" and the chance it may provide to save humanity begins.[AnimeNewsNetwork.com]

I know how hard I COULD be on this particular anime, but I'm going to attempt to be better than that. Everytime I think about it, ICE leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Created to help promote one of many spin-off side-groups of the massively popular AKB48 J-Pop group in Japan, the feeling of that doesn't come across once during the entire series (except, I believe, in the voice acting). Instead of going for an anime focused on a J-pop group and their music, a post-apocalyptic anime was chosen instead. And boy, does it ever live up to its genre.

The DVD cover. Click to enlarge.

As the summary states, this is a world where men have died off and all that remain are women. For some comic readers, this will probably remind you of Y: The Last Man, except where that comic featured one man remaining alive, this one actually doesn't feature any men past the opening scene of the series. At first the story starts out in present day, and then our “main girl”, or who we thought would be our main girl, ends up randomly getting hit by a truck and hospitalized.

Fast forward to several generations later and the entire world is in disarray, with a giant fortress overlooking it. As the story goes, we are introduced to our main cast, but mostly, we focus on two women: the older and kick-ass Hitomi Landsknecht, and her younger, more naïve sidekick Yuki Ice-T.

Hitomi is emotionless for most of the series, putting duty before desire, however Yuki harbors many feelings for Hitomi and mostly watches her from afar. As the story evolves, Hitomi begins to come to terms with her feelings for Yuki. Their love isn't to be though, as this is a tragedy about love in war and how war tears that love apart.

The biggest issues with ICE is that there is no attention to detail. This was a story slopped together by an animation company that only has this anime to its name. In the excruciating hour-and-a-half this story takes to tell, so many things just happen without consequence that it feels like the creators were just putting ideas out there, throwing them in, and seeing if they mixed together well. There is a wide cast of characters, all of them kick ass women, and there's no nudity or “sexy” moments in this series either. That was one thing I was impressed with. Generally with a premise like this, it's easy for anime companies to pander to the mainstream and add in a bit of sex appeal in order to sell their product. Despite how terrible this anime actually is, I can at least respect their integrity of not pandering to the mainstream audience.

Ready for war.

I keep talking about this anime being terrible, but what is really wrong with it? Well, like I mentioned before, the entire story is made up of ideas being thrown together to see if they'll stick - there's no cohesive narrative and it causes the entire idea to fall flat on its behind. The animation is very experimental, but you can see the shoestring budget straight from the get-go. There are entire scenes built around flash animation like you'd see on the Newgrounds website, when that was still a big thing. It's just a mess. The voice acting really isn't very good, and some of the characters end up being flat out annoying because of it. And when you get right down to it, the entire “message” that the series tries to sell you is that war and strife are all caused by men. And it's men who are blamed for how effed up this future Earth ends up being.

The story tries to convince you that life would be better without men, and girl power is the way to go, but as the story rolls on it becomes obviously apparent that it doesn't matter which gender is in charge. The world will go to crud because of terrible people, or simple acts of nature. However many characters still go their entire arc without ever coming to terms with this reality.

The main character arc of the series centers around Hitomi, and making sure she stops being an emotionless soldier, and becomes someone who recognizes her feelings for the one she loves. However it's not a very well written character arc, and it often feels like she loves Yuki only because Yuki loves her. The two girls don't even end up knowing each other very long in the series, and because they're the protagonists they're supposed to love one another. In the end there's this hint that the first girl we see in the beginning is Hitomi, she's seeing her future self but it remains only that, a hint, as the story ends with our first girl waking up in the hospital and going about the rest of her days as if this were all just a dream. And no, I don't care enough to look up the girl's name.

Hitomi's just about as tired of this show as I am.

ICE also centers around one more story thread... the titular “ice”. Very little is known about it, and to be honest we really get no explanation whatsoever in the story as to what this “ice” actually is, except, if I remember correctly, a biological weapon created by the male gender. It is used quite a bit in the series though, and every time I grow more confused by what's going on with it.

See, the way the “ice” is shown in the anime is characters getting frozen, and then exploding, and from the debris a baby magically springs forward and apparently the “ice” basically reverts you back to your infant form. Okay, it's an interesting concept but its execution is all style, never any substance. And really, that's all this series is too. There's nothing to it, there's no saving grace.

That ice is about to give birth.

The music isn't good, the animation isn't good, the voice acting isn't good, the story isn't good, the characters aren't good, all around it's a pretty crappy series. And there's also a movie version of it. PPM seriously didn't think 3 episodes was bad enough, and they re-animated it to make a movie version. I haven't watched the movie version, and I don't plan to. I can't recommend this series, and all I can do is simply issue a warning:

Don't watch it. Ever. Unless you're like me, and get curious when someone tells you not to watch something. I've seen a lot of crappy anime in my time, and I'm sure I will see more, but I don't think any of them will ever top the massacre of my eyes that was ICE. So, if you do end up watching it out of curiosity, well by all means let me just say: I told ya so.

Final Score: I can't give it one. It's just bad. It gets a “0” from me, if anything. Don't ever watch this.